A Valentine for Angela (for Angela Davis, George Jackson and The Black Panther Party)

When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine

Tell her

No code of morals

Or pastoral sermons of redemption

in bastions of struggle

nor private language

Or puritanical divinity

from the tyrannical gatekeepers

of black consciousness

in Baptist Churches

Where the house of God

like the people are falling

and bibles are missing

countenances are broken

and carriages are bent

on Grandfathers

huddled like old horses

in Chapel basements

can keep her locks from draping

my thrilled skin

I felt the linguistics of freedom

without right-wing caveats

and the sophistical footnotes

of kept intellectuals

when Black Power waxed

the center of my tower

and the bottom of your well

farther than this cell

and closer than holding you

in my arms now

I found the status quo

on endless streets with names

and no names

we neglect or accommodate

In a sound dream

on spots

we smother

or straddle

we are a sexual coterie

I wanted to indict you for voluntary servitude

buying part and parcel of our own existence

like exploitation bought and exploitation sold

back to the exploitable…

With a shameless display

of unnecessary needs and haughty miens

napping, unconscious, and folded

Like Black parents

who cannot recognize their children

Hiding inside androgynous clothing

Reciting the lines of criminal poets

perverting language that appeals to them

Black Panthers in proletariat-drag

When Heidegger said

The dreadful has already happened!

Tell her…

Huey

is an effete dilettante

living life inside a penthouse

longing to be outside in the cracker box

raping after he was free

Down with the masses!

Up with the bourgeoisie!

Eldridge

came to the Party shouting

“I am a rapist!”

“I [am] a patriarch!”

Power was not concept

abstract or privilege for Eldridge

His last contribution

will be the design

of cock pants

And Bobby

is a politician

with idealistic intentions

running for the Mayor of Oakland

loyal to the Patriarchs

that bound and gagged him

in the courtroom

Elaine Brown

confused pussy with power

will deny

Huey beat her down

and ran her out of town

in her red Mercedes Benz…

Hide your guns from Jonathan

My brother is poised for Fatalism

Suicidal ideations are necessary considerations

when voluntary death is a blow against

excessive regulations

The gun…

is justification

for the enigma

of an absurd existence

when God is dead

like Nietzsche and Sartre said…

and heaven is empty

When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine

Your status in the ballroom

on that intellectual runway

does not resemble

the place we found

Bring me back from Limbo…

Your breath is shallow

Your pulse is faint

The ring is dark

The tower is steep

The well is deep…

Are you coming too?

I am waiting

in this din

pacing the floor in my 9 x 4

in absolute solitude

wanting

you, you, you,

again…

Copyright 2004, 2015, 2021 E Maria Shelton Speller.  All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Reserved][Reserved] — An Invitation to Dine

Dear Poet, [Yes, you!]

I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).  I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity.  I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood.  I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.

I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved] with dope poesy and select a date for submission. However, if we receive one hundred thousand and one couplings, we’d read them…  but frankly, why not do, all of the above.

The empty brackets function like missing endings now — lacking only your bylines, pseudonyms, and ghosts — in translatable bars that work in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).

Poets make this space immersive.  Explode – The Writer’s Environment is an interactive environment — and this is the first foray for interactivity in this community — that links back to you!

Starting August 15, 2017 — let’s finish this poem with the best bars — curated for Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) here…  Bon appétit.

Cordially,

The Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan

PS:  No Spam — Balls in the air!  An experience for us and them.

Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller

 

 

 

Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s Parallel Discussions

Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s

Parallel Discussions (In Medias Res) Overtaken by Events

 

Behind Pushkin’s Coffeehouse, Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso sat on the remnants of a barge, trading barbs in Ibiza… swinging high top leather sock hip hop sneakers, and creeper boots in blue green virtual water, with Rick Owens’ reflection in the pool, burning fat ones – away from the beautiful ones — in a Period Piece.  The Darlings of today’s literati — visionaries during the Harlem Renaissance, play themselves in a satirical throwback in VR.

Louis Picasso: “In RL, it’s 6 P.M. You just got home from work or you work from home in your virtual office. You decide to spend the evening in space! You scan Balmain for your Avatar – dope fashion — with as much audacity as Hype Williams’ black lacquered Keisha in Belly — wearing Versace!

You decide to download your brand new Porsche designed by Porsche and Atari for Microsoft, on the Pacific Coast Highway — Malibu on the left, Pepperdine University on the right, you’re on your way to virtual LA in the fast lane — your thighs are burning. Other avatars and their cars share the PCH too — driving Vipers, Corvettes, the white BMW X6 and you are speeding at 100 MIPS, streaming Coltrane.

Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “Then you decide to go to BET’s virtual Nuyorican Café in Gotham City for the Open Mike – Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore are featured (as themselves) tonight. You hand the keys to the valet — pay at the door with your password, sit front row center no matter what time you arrive, sign up to read your poem — because you can start over from the beginning or resume.  Gender! Lame. Race is unimaginative in Space. Ethnicity is a brand — at best.  The Open Mike is over at 10 P.M. but there is still time to go to Bar Pitti. You walk in and Claude McKay is at the bar in a heated debate with Ralph Ellison about literary ownership — by Netflix.

McKay shouts and then nearly whispers to Ellison, ‘It takes more than creative androgyny to “embody” the opposite sex. The storytelling responsibility of all writers, whether female or male is to fill the void. When a woman creates a man, she must imagine the sensation of “owning” a penis. When a man creates a woman, he must imagine the sensation of “owning” a vagina. It is a void, not a vacuum. A vacuum would imply the all-consuming black hole — the feminization of sex. It is not trained comprehension or chromosomes — it takes pure imagination to get the story straight…’

Louis Picasso:  “Then, at Midnight, you blow kisses and wuggles to your friends, and log off. You stand and stretch your back, and your bladder is bursting because you forgot about your biological realities. The television is off; it has been off for weeks. Why watch television when you can be your own audience? Randall Walser said it best, “The filmmaker says, ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ The space maker says, ‘Here, I’ll help you discover.’ We will be our own creators functioning like actors in high culture — tools of the taste public!  We will create our own universes — our own planets.   We can superimpose our images circa 6 BC – AD 30, and follow Jesus to the Promised Land, witness the crucifixion – and how we feel and what we think is utterly private and without commercials! Because, global messages with common appeal will forever change with today’s technology, the challenge is to make communication visual, images symbolic, and still sell product… I want to propose arcane ideas…”

Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “I want to develop, manage, and direct vision. My goal is to be where imagination and business are indistinguishable, because imagination without business, and business without imagination is as incongruous as capitalism without consumers…   I found a dope quote dog!”

“When, she was still in her teens, well before she met Caesar, Cleopatra already had slept with Antony… though Caesar was fifty-three and she but twenty-three or so she proved ready enough to bed her third Roman. It is said that Cleopatra was a woman of lively turn and enticing talents. She also had a keen sense of the political. That this Roman [Caesar] conqueror had the power to secure the Egyptian throne for her must have added to the attraction she felt for him…Caesar established her in a sumptuous villa across the Tiber, from which she held court, while political leaders, financiers, and men of letters, including the renowned Cicero, danced in attendance.” Michael Parenti

Louis Picasso: I’m reading the same book, and I have a better one!

In a prologue to Caesar and Cleopatra [George Bernard Shaw] that is almost never performed, the god Ra tells the audience how Rome discovered that ‘the road to riches and greatness is through robbery of the poor and slaughter of the weak.’ In conformity with that dictum, the Romans ‘robbed their own poor until they became great masters of that art, and knew by what laws it could be made to appear seemly and honest.’ And after squeezing their own people dry, they stripped the poor throughout the many other lands they conquered.” Michael Parenti

Aristotle Michelangelo:  Shrugged his shoulders unconsciously, “Chez Bricktop in Paris?”

Louis Picasso:  Not now. I am having a violent reaction to prescription drugs!  My body is like, ‘Don’t put that shit down here again!’  They gave me all this medication for Acute Caesarion whatever — and I took it! Of course, you don’t exhaust the shit. You’re not an idiot. But, what the fuck? Where the weed at?”

Aristotle Michelangelo:  I think it would be dope to channel Kerouac’s apology for automatic writing.

“He likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow, and unrestrained association, to reveal the unconscious…  because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose!” Dystopia, Explode 2015 2.0

So, here goes… They called her Marnie — behind her back. I was torn. I played with variations of Marnie. Black Marnie. Brown Marnie, Tortilla Marnie. It’s the language of found art. Bansky, Kehinde, Jazz, Hip Hop… They teased each other.  Hitchcock’s Margaret, Mary, Marnie, teases Mark, so she could get the combination, to his company safe, and steal the money. She was a Kleptomaniac, a compulsive thief. A killer. She disappears. On the run! He tracks her like an animal, and finds her at a Lodge, riding her horse to the stables. He orders her off the horse, tells her she’ll walk — he’ll ride. He interrogates her. She tells him a bullshit story she can’t keep straight. He calls it, manure! Tells her to start over from the beginning, and this time — tell the truth. Back at the Lodge – he tells her to freshen up, change her clothes so he might take her to the police – she thinks. She does not know… It’s Tippi Hedren in RL!  The white woman of a black man’s dreams – when he dreams about white women. Blonde, pearly white teeth and skin — Barbie! Beckie!  He tells her, they will return to ‘the house’ and announce they are engaged, would to be married within the week and then cruise around the world. Of course, she thinks he’s “Out of his mind!” He told her, it was either marriage or the police, old girl. Black Marnie. Who would play her?

They get married. Eventually he takes her virginity. She tries to commit suicide. I don’t think I want to go there… Suicide. Who should play Mark? [#nomoreslavestories.]  Does he catch her?

Louis Picasso:  I remember that story.  He said,  I caught a real animal this time. I had to train her… to trust me.*

Aristotle Michelangelo:  Pussy Riot danced in the cathedral — goes to jail, and the artist nailed his scrotum to the Red Square.  She’s a prisoner of love. That kind of love makes me uncomfortable, racked, and anguished like a pet must be around possessive people. The energy is ignitable like the choice between blowing up and letting go. I don’t want to belong to anyone. But, what do I know about love?

Louis Picasso:   Black people don’t like black people. That’s why we’re in this — hole… barrel, bucket, duck it, fuck it… We know it’s true.  Listen to the tonal center of this beat!

Aristotle Michelangelo:  In sixty revolutions a minute, if it’s not organic, I can’t get with it. Hate is not organic. Hate is a social construct. I want to live the life I swam to the egg for… A social construct is like zoon pushed to the egg, by stronger swimmers behind it. It’s still goal niggaz. I want an organic experience on this gridiron. A certain freedom, mere man can’t give, conceive or contrive. I want freedom Divine.  You want to be free — you have to fuggin’ work for it.  Zufi?

Aristotle Michelangelo:  You need money, software and rigs in the virtual world. Bombs are obsolete. Race and gender is a pastiche — game challenges for points.

Louis Picasso:  Beauty and power is iconography and homely stamps are hiccups – and brick and mortar is a path to experience the destruction of daredevils and matadors — in coliseums of pestilence and poverty – empirically.

Aristotle Michelangelo:   Why go there? When, life is a perfect dream in a virtual world.

Louis Picasso:  IJS. Get on board with — evolution. Evolution is not physical space. It’s the diamond life in our heads on a loop. Its VR not the moon…

Aristotle Michelangelo:  I love wearing the mask! You can’t see my countenance — in La La Land, my eyes may smile.  My lip may curl up or down… I’m an introvert; an INTJ — is that Caprino?

Louis Picasso:  Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, it will be impossible to ignore slavery in America… Why are some Black Americans worrying about slavery in America being taught in schools? The horse is out of the barn! Instead of embracing Juneteenth and all that it implies… Black Americans are WHINING and using the language of slaves, “they won’t, let us, allow us, give us and get…” Instead black Americans are still looking the other way when a black man drags a black woman by her hair [DC], and black people are murdered by black people in Chicago – for giggles. June 19, 2021 marks the day, that Black America must acknowledge that ‘we’ are no longer slaves and assume responsibility — that’s what freedom is.

Copyright 2016, 2018, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller.  All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast  rewritten or redistributed without permission.

*Alfred Hitchcock, Marnie

Lust for TIDAL — The Sweet Sixteen

Someone has to go with Ego

To the story about the story inside the poem

 

On ground eroding under sweet feet

Where dreams so real are accessible

and parodies will do

 

Epic stories tied to epic tracks

One point perspectives

and narcissistic points of view

 

Aural stories linked to sublime beats:

The gift between Agamemnon and Achilles

The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

between Socrates and Kant

 

An opus for Free Angela and all Political Prisoners

Her quiet laughter at the end

 

Why should Kim go alone to France?

Fie for Shame!  Blood hath been shed…*

 

Make room for Superego!

Believing the fiction they think

They know

It’s true

 

Someone has to go with Id

Those streaming millennial Randites!

kissing clicks on tours

happy blowing up Karaoke machines again

 

Dénouement:  This whimsical WIP is for the sixteen owners of Tidal High Fidelity Music Streaming!  Turn it up!

Copyright 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

*The Tragedy of Macbeth, William Shakespeare

 

 

 

Queen!

Flagrancy

 

Draped over flesh folding,

Overlapping, lapping, titties like water

 

Coursing over plantations

landing on designer gods

 

She’s the Queen of make believe

dross, lace, and fancies

the strumpet of style and envy

supply and demand

framing references

of fragmentation and icons

the whore of big business

luxury and privilege

Capital Supreme

 

She gives it to you every time

the same kiss same trade

whispering buy me

while you sit splayed still

eating her conditions

wanting more between

feasts

 

An electric whore transfixed on fiction

screaming paeans of promises

in fleeting imagery faster than you can think

 

Candle eyes revealing

nothing and something equally

commercial bitch

coca cola coochie

 

The queen of white hot dreams and fantasies

Dreaming the business of culture

for recycled cyclical people

in suspended disbelief

 

Chronos’ eating children again

consuming – regurgitating

the piss Ellison smelled in the hallway

the blood he saw at the top of the stairs

of the worn unfresh and rotted

postmodern prostitute

circumscribing your will to dream

someone you

 

White voodoo yahoo

looping tricks for

fifteen pimps

 

Coliseum dreamers

in concert muffle

the scream

 

Hegemony is a bore!

Capitalism is a whore!

Patriarchy is a sham!

Subjugation is complete!

You can’t dream for me…

 

Children of the light!

dreaming in strophe

what she dreams

what she thinks

what she wants you to need

what she wants you to buy

when to laugh

cry

what to eat and how often

who to love

hate

how to suffer

on her terms

 

Dreamers of the light!

dancing for the gods

in collective nothingness

tweaked to think vapid

celebrated center-folds

of flagrancy at your expense

dare to dream

alone in dark energy

 

Turn off the lights

of the Queen of white hot fantasies

in unsuspended disbelief

 

Let’s make believe!

The Sirens’ in the room

and you applaud

on your knees

Give props to the Queen

of postmodern dreams

of white white-white hot trips

on Lilly fields designed

for you to dance

for the gods

pimping their dreams of her… and them

on wide screen… for you

~dance

Kill your TV!

 

Copyright 2004, 2015 by  E Maria Shelton Speller.  All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

The Godforsaken

Before the godforsaken

had time to swallow…

they knew who first

judged what out of dreams

came truly real*

and he was fastened to a rock

and they knew who

stirreth up the people and dippeth his hand**

in the dish with Judas

and he was nailed to a cross

And they read books within books

about wise and foolish virgins

and signs of the end

and love and judgment

and they heard God talk

through the mouths of men

who talked about him

his son and the holy ghost

 

When spectators provided the notion of reality

Christ and Prometheus

were objectified and subjectified allegory

spheres of hope and rebellion

courage and prudence

temperance and justice

and how they chose to read it

in the time before terror

depended on what level

they chose to see it

 

Pity

incredible people and prophets

who function as vehicle

for literal, moral,

and anagogical levels of meaning

 

Before the godforsaken

had time to swallow…

they reused and refashioned the heads

of emperors in their own image

because they could

they reinforced power and authority

with legitimate political imagery

like the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses

and General Holofernes

They respected the classical past

in fertile crescents of greed

and they rejected classical design

in the center of ruins

 

They housed the rock in the dome

on which Muhammad ascended to heaven

and hung the Virgin Mary’s blue robe

in Chartres Cathedral

and it didn’t burn

and they appropriated columns

and Corinthian capitals

and called it the holy triumph

of Islam

 

When denizens of form said

Nothing is new…

The godforsaken asked,

Since when?

since the Lion Gate

since the Great Sphinx of Gizeh

since Doric and Ionic orders

since the Palette of King Narmer

since the Parthenon

since Stonehenge

Since when?

 

They stood in the light of starry nights

in the drum, coffers, and concrete cylinders

of uninterrupted space in the Pantheon

and made no apologies for ripping off

master tracks from the past

and heard the hip hop train

sampling every post-hit

with unripe music and blood

and mounted the heads of gods

on the manifest

like the catalog of procreation

in Genesis

 

They heard his Mother

three blocks away

on parallel streets

screaming redundantly

You won’t take my child!

You won’t take my child!

at the vigil where transvestites

whispered about how many times

her child was stabbed in the neck…

 

Lord have mercy!

Who are these motherfuckers?

on the bottom rung of the Ladder of Descent

trying to climb up

on the backs of allegories

floating in fleeting and airy hope

part of the story

part of the sin

 

Before the godforsaken

had time to swallow…

 

He knew

that love ends

as it begins again

on rocks and crosses

in books and dreams

and politics and imagery

under domes and temples

in music and song

and blood and death

in stories and sin

and in the hands

of God

~ the Swallows are building.

 

Copyright 2004, 2013 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

*Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound

** Matthew 26: V21,V22,V23,V25